In 1986, the population of Damanhur was 188,939. The richly cultivated Beheira province gives rise to mainly agricultural industries which include cotton ginning, potato processing, and date picking. It also has a market for cotton and rice.

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Damanhur was known in the ancient Egyptian scripts by the name "Dmi en Hor", which means the city of the god Hor or Horus, on the grounds that it was a center for the worship of this god. It was also known by other names: in the Egyptian texts, "Behdet"; in the Greek texts "Hermou Polis Mikra" (the lesser city of Hermes), translated to Latin by the Romans as "Hermopolis Parva"; the name "Obollenoboles" (or Apollonopolis) associated it with the Greek god Apollo, and it was also called "Tel Ballamon". Later, the Egyptians reverted to the old name, represented as "Temenhor", which after the Islamic conquest was reinterpreted in Arabic as "Damanhur", the present name.

The town contains the tomb of Yaakov Abuhatzeira (1805–1880) a Moroccan Rabbi who died there in 1880 while on a pilgrimage to Palestine. The site is visited each year by hundreds of devotees.[4] The tomb is an official antiquity site protected by the government of Egypt.[5] Some Egyptians have protested against permitting Jews to enter Egypt to make the annual pilgrimage to Rabbi Abuhatzeira's tomb.[6][7]